Selling Sexual Knowledge

Bringing together perspectives from the histories of medicine, sexuality, and the book, Sarah Bull presents the first study of how medical publications on sexual matters were made, promoted, and sold in Victorian Britain. Drawing on pamphlets, manuals, textbooks, periodicals, and more, this innovative book illustrates the free and unruly circulation of sexual information throug...

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Bringing together perspectives from the histories of medicine, sexuality, and the book, Sarah Bull presents the first study of how medical publications on sexual matters were made, promoted, and sold in Victorian Britain. Drawing on pamphlets, manuals, textbooks, periodicals, and more, this innovative book illustrates the free and unruly circulation of sexual information through a rapidly expanding publishing industry. Bull demonstrates how the ease with which print could be copied and claimed, recast and repurposed, presented persistent challenges to those seeking to position themselves as authorities over sexual knowledge at this pivotal moment. Medical publishers, practitioners, and activists embraced allegations of obscenity and censorship to promote ideas, contest authority, and consolidate emergent collective identities. Layer by layer, their actions helped create and sustain one of the most potent myths ever made about the Victorians: their sexual ignorance.This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.

List of Figures page ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of Abbreviations xiv
Introduction 1
Medical Publishing in the Age of Mass Print 5
Making Authority in a Convoluted Marketplace 9
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List of Figures page ix
Acknowledgements xi
List of Abbreviations xiv
Introduction 1
Medical Publishing in the Age of Mass Print 5
Making Authority in a Convoluted Marketplace 9
The Frame of Obscenity 15
Plan of the Book 18
1 Holywell Street Medicine 22
Medical Eroticism at the Birth of the Pornography Trade 26
Opening the Catalogue 35
The Jolly Little Library 48
2 Stereotyped Knowledge 57
Paper Museums 60
Copies of Copies 74
Cash in the Quack’s Corner 82
3 Publishing for Professional Advantage 90
The Gentlemanly Monopoly 94
The Publisher as Agent 102
The Medical Publisher’s List 108
Pandering, Auto-Advertising, and Paratextual Contamination 113
4 Obscene ... in a Certain Sense 121
The Trials of Prosecution 125
Medical Works in Court 129
Obscene Quackery 140
The Circumstances of the Publication 148
5 Dull Instead of Light 152
Obscenity Law as an Alternative Instrument 154
Elevating Medical Print Culture 165
The Frame of Convention 175
6 Branding Birth Control 181
Reframing Contraception Literature 183
Plausible Deniability 193
A Risky Business? 203
7 Be Careful about the Publisher 213
Making and Unmaking a Medical Book 215
Semi-Scientific Pornography 223
Sexual Science and Sexual Ignorance 232
Conclusion: Victorian Ignorance 244
Appendix A: Holywell Street Publishers’ Catalogues 250
Appendix B: Translations of Consulting Surgeons’ Manuals 252
Bibliography 255
Index 284
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